Dungeon
by AbsoluteIndifference
Summary: There is no death penalty in Equestria. Some know this more intimately than others.


**Enjoy.**

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Chapter One

_"There is a fate worse than death,"_ a sultry sweet voice whispered in the dark: fragile, barely remembered words in an endless sea of black. He had awoken to the sounds of eternity when the voice returned to him. The tintinnabulation of eons chilled him to the bone, but he wasn't quite sure why. _"Do you accept?"_

The sound of falling water, a noise as old as time itself, was everywhere.

Endless dripping. Everything… dripping away. His mortality remained intact, but his life was melting away before his straining eyes. Each drop of water spilt… like so many tears.

Can mountains cry?

It was in his coat: the water. It hurt! How long? How long had he been there?

"Th-Three…" Days? Months? Years? Millennia?! Time meant nothing in the dank, deep places of the earth. It was all mildew, stone, and stagnant air. And dripping. Dripping, dripping, dripping! Time meant nothing. He had no place to go, nowhere to be. Why bother with time, right? It wasn't like he could just read a sundial, anyway.

A fat droplet of water, laced with the gritty sediment of the mountains above, landed messily on his closed eyelid.

"Augh!"

Moving hurt. Hurt so much. He hadn't moved in eons. Days? It didn't matter. Never matter… he just had to do it. One hoof in front of the other. A muscle spasm wracked his rear legs and he nearly collapsed, back to the damp stone floor below.

Why was it so hard to think? Goddesses, the pain! The ring! In-Inhibitor. That's what they called it. They? Who were—

*Splash!*

Hoof on water. He'd stepped in a puddle. The stallion in the dark knew it was water, not by sight, taste, or touch, but by smell. It smelt of time without end. He didn't need to open his eyes. They would never taste the light again. He would never feel the touch of wind, nor savor the taste of grass.

The stallion slowly knelt down, careful of his twitching muscles, and took a drink. The water was dirty, but the icy liquid did much to calm his nerves and soothe his parched throat. The beaten colt lifted his head from the puddle. He knew he had to do something. There was a reason, but his head… it was so fuzzy. The memories were jumbled and it was the thing. The… the INHIBITOR on his horn. They put it on him. He had to get it off. He…

They.

He remembered a tribunal: old mares and stallions glaring with malicious hatred… at him. Then guards, beating and laughing. Golden horseshoes and armor. How they shone in the sunlight of the courtyard, on the way to the door.

An entrance to the deep places.

The guard who threw him in had had a blue mane and eyes of the same hue: a unicorn like him, wearing the regalia of one with the utmost authority. There had been no mercy in those blue eyes, even as he fell. So far…

Forward. Moving forward. That's the ticket. The blind stallion shuffled around the puddle, tentatively feeling ahead with his horn. There had to be some way to get the metal ring off of him. Sudden bursts of magic didn't work, as the pain nearly knocked him unconscious, and just pulling on it with his hooves was next to impossible. It was ingrained in the fibers of his horn, and it made everything so hazy.

Why did they do it? He kept asking himself this question. Why take away his magic: his only real chance of survival? A light in the ever-present twilight of his clouded mind?

"_So the darkness will be complete,"_ the voice, a dim memory, responded.

Over and over it mocked him: always the same.

"_So the darkness will be complete."_

"…_darkness…"_

"…_complete."_

"I'm insane," the stallion croaked as the horrid dripping continued around him. His voice echoed back, twisted and warped, a testament to the vastness of the caverns he now called home. "YoU're INsaNe…"

The stallion kept walking. An image of him screaming and falling to his untimely death at the bottom of a hidden pratfall soon gave him pause in his journey, however, and he readjusted his technique. Lowering his head, the tired unicorn carefully moved forward once more, his horn tapping irregularly at the stone before him as he went.

"_Just like the blind ponies in Manehatten,"_ he mused. A dip in the floor caught his horn and his head jerked painfully. _"Okay… maybe not JUST like them…"_

Several more droplets of cold liquid rained down upon his already soaking fur, prompting the stallion to let loose a quiet snort and shiver spastically. Ignoring the dripping was impossible, so the stallion instead wondered when he'd encounter his first skeletons. It was inevitable, really. He couldn't be the only pony in history to be punished this way, could he? He expected his horn to strike clattering bone at any time: any second now.

Seconds turned to hours turned to days upon days upon days. He was still walking, the ceiling was still dripping, it was still darker than the inside of a changeling's heart, and the lone stallion was fuming. Fuming at them. It felt good to be angry again, but if he didn't find food soon, he would no longer have the energy to feel rage.

Thoughts of daisy sandwiches, hay fries, and even garden salad, a dish he rarely touched let alone _daydreamed_ about, danced in his head. How long had it been since his "last meal" up above? It had been in the courtyard, under the wavering light of the moon. The meal had been meager, a feast for a rabbit or a tortoise, but not nearly enough for a grown stallion sentenced to life in the dungeons.

"Heh... 'life',"the seething colt mumbled, tripping slightly as he skirted around a small spire in the stone, a stalagmite, perhaps. His throbbing horn had bumped into the ancient tower of minerals while he daydreamed, saving him a knock to the head. "Won't be living very long down here, now will I? Not when it's darker than Luna's royal asshole in this Goddess-forsaken place!" The stumbling colt's voice rose in pitch as his rant continued, burning his throat and cracking his voice, and his screaming echoes mocked him ceaselessly as he rode the euphoria of his anger back down... down to solemn defeat.

In the beginning, when his strength was plentiful, he had howled: yelled and screamed and spat at the place high above where the door should've been. He'd cursed them. All of them. The Princesses, the tribunal, and the guards, but _him_ especially. That blue-maned unicorn: the one who'd thrown him to his eventual demise. The wrathful stallion had sworn an oath on that day. He would rise up from this place. He would see the sun again, and feel the touch of soft, green grass upon his hooves. He would find that pony, and when he did…

The magic impaired colt ground to a halt, one ear pricked up. Something was different. All thought ceased as he finally opened his eyes, straining to see something, ANYTHING new. He might as well have kept them closed. It took several moments to process what he was hearing, but when he finally realized what it was, the lone unicorn allowed himself a weary grin.

Running water amongst the incessant dripping.

Hurrying toward the sound, the eager stallion almost tripped on a small crevasse in the slick Canterhorn stone, but he didn't care. When water ran, it went somewhere, and that somewhere often supported life. Life meant food. Food meant survival. Survival…

Well, survival meant vengeance.

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**Thanks for reading!**


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